Cookoff

[McPat]

I'm not really bragging...ok, yes I am. This last weekend our town had a pork cookoff to kick off our Labor Day Hog Capital Festival. I entered the rib catagory and, with the help of my 7 year old son, won second place. We lost to some professionals from another town. Anyhow, 2nd place isn't too bad for my first time. Incidentally, there were five entries in our catagory
McPat

[M.T. Pockets]

I love ribs and cooking them, let me know how you did it!

[McPat]

Ok, here we go...

Marinade over night (at least) in red wine, olive oil, onion, garlic, sage, rosemary, and parsley.

Rub: 8 parts brown sugar, 3 parts salt, 1 part chili powder, and one part of whatever combination of spices you like. I use curry, onoin powder, ground pepper, ground red chili pepper, paprika, and whatever I might have in my drawer at the time.

Rub country style ribs down and grill on the lowest heat you can get your charcole grill on for 2-3 hours. I like to throw fresh sage and rosemary on the coals every whipstich so they kind of smoke up on the meat.

Sauce: 3 parts ketchup, 1 part brown sugar, about 1/4 part red wine, and to taste: balsamic vinigar, curry, ground black pepper, liquid smoke, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, salt, and ground red chili pepper.

Start brushing on the sauce with about 30-45 minutes left in cooking at about 10 or 15 minute intervals to make the sauce all thick and sticky when done.

Presentation(and this is what I did for the contest, but hell, a clean plate and lots of napki are good enough for me): On a round platter, arrange red leaf lettuce in a circle around the platter so the red part of the leaves just stick over the edge of the platter. Then arrange spaghetti squash ( I grilled some of that that day for this) in a circle around the platter then arrange the ribs in the center. You see from the center; ribs, squash, the the red part of the lettuce. I you do nthis right you have enough room to put six wedges of ripe red tomato around the ribs in the 12:00, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, & 10:00 positions. Through some chopped parsley on top and stand up a couple sprigs of rosemary on the center between two ribs.

There you have it...ENJOY!!

McPat